Obama’s Amnesty Plan: A Step to Non-Citizen Voting

Prsident Obama has vowed to grant amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants [illegal aliens]...

Some on the right accuse Democrats of wanting to stack the deck in their favor by opening our doors to millions of mostly Hispanic immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. The reasoning is simple: Latinos have mainly voted Democrat in the past, and if President Obama unilaterally grants legal status to a large group already living here, their loyalty will be locked up. Ultimately, those Hispanics will become citizens, and could well determine our future politics...

Consider a measure recently proposed by Daniel Dromm, a member of New York’s City Council. Mr. Dromm is expected to introduce a bill early next year that would permit people who are not citizens, but who live in the U.S. legally, to vote in local elections...

Takoma Park, Maryland, passed legislation in 1992 allowing non-citizens to vote in local political contests; five other municipalities in that state have followed suit. In Chicago, all legal residents can vote in school board elections. In recent years, local governments in Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, Texas, Illinois and Vermont have passed or considered allowing non-citizens to vote in certain elections, arguing that immigrant populations would become more integrated into their communities if allowed to take part in the democratic process.

Such thinking is not new in our country. Indeed, during the 1800s, some twenty-two states and territories allowed aliens to vote, mostly in a bid to attract new residents. This practice died out in the 1920s...

In azure-blue California, non-citizens have recently procured numerous rights, including the ability to procure drivers’ licenses and to practice law..

Meanwhile, many on the right argue that non-citizen voting, while illegal in most jurisdictions, is already rampant in the United States. The 1993 National Voter Registration Act made registering to vote extremely simple...

Indeed, a paper written by Jesse Richmond and David Earnest, two professors at Old Dominion University, based on wide-ranging sampling data, states, “More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote...